The attempt in Georgia to ruin the lives of 19 Republican leaders with a sham indictment should not be accepted by Americans nationwide. Georgia taxpayers should not be looted by the Fulton County prosecutor with this travesty foisted on the rest of the country, and the American people should not go along with this abuse of power.
Leftists are exploiting a weakness in our political system that for too long has given nearly unlimited and unaccountable power to low-level prosecutors. A county prosecutor has no business interfering with the election for president of the United States, yet Democrats are so determined to hold onto the White House in 2024 that they are willing to go there.
Their single-minded purpose is to prevent – at all costs – the election of a Republican as president. If they succeed at blocking or even imprisoning Trump, no other candidate is likely to take on the Establishment ever again.
The notion that one partisan Democrat county prosecutor can paralyze our presidential election by indicting 19 Republicans, including the front-runner for president, would be comical if portrayed in a movie. Two defendants have already removed their cases to federal court, and Trump is expected to do likewise soon.
In addition to trying to destroy the 19 named defendants, the Democrat county prosecutor in Atlanta absurdly smears 30 more Republicans as unindicted alleged co-conspirators. CNN has identified most of them, including a former New York City police commissioner and even the head of the well-respected conservative group Judicial Watch.
A bright political future awaits Republican leaders who stand against this misuse and abuse of prosecutorial power by a Democrat county prosecutor. So far, too few Republican officials have spoken up against it, which if allowed against Trump would be replayed against other conservative candidates.
But grassroots Republican voters have been energized by this latest assault on President Trump, and his primary rivals should form a united front so that Trump can focus on overcoming this 19-ring circus in Fulton County, Georgia. The Republican dollars being wasted by the GOP candidates campaigning hopelessly against Trump should be reallocated to provide a legal defense to the Republican victims of this atrocity.
The First Amendment rights of Trump and his supporters are not to be burdened by political hacks disguised as county prosecutors. Political speech rights should be better protected against an out-of-state indictment by a partisan prosecutor, and laws should be strengthened to prevent this sordid spectacle from ever happening again.
Only one question is worth asking the eight Republican candidates assembling at the GOP debate on Wednesday, which Trump is properly skipping: What would these candidates do to prevent the ongoing abuse of prosecutorial power by Democrats to try improperly to win elections?
Voters deserve more than mere platitudes about the weaponization of government by the Left. Congress should begin by issuing subpoenas on prosecutors who misuse their offices to interfere with a presidential election.
The Republican candidates should be criticizing the Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for his hands-off, see-no-evil approach to the crisis, even after a state senator asked him to call a special session of the legislature. Apparently these political indictments were timed to drop after legislators had adjourned for the year, but they can be called back.
The hardship imposed on 19 Republicans by this political prosecution is immense and nearly unbearable. Most of them lack the resources to fund their own legal defense, and some of them are not even in Georgia at all.
If a Republican county prosecutor had done this to 19 Democrats, then Democrat governors around the country would be rallying to their defense. There would be howls of protest about such a blatant misuse of prosecutorial power for political gain.
If Georgia will not restrain the misuse of its taxpayer dollars to infringe on First Amendment rights, other states should defend the rights of their own residents against this wrongful attempt to chill political activity in a national election. Objecting to an election as a fraud is no crime, yet that is all these indictments allege.
Racketeering laws invoked by the Democrats in Georgia against Republicans have been misused before against conservative groups. The Supreme Court finally shut down that improper use against a pro-life group under the federal racketeering law, but only after multiple appeals to the high court.
In 1964, Phyllis Schlafly wrote about the perennial battle between powerful liberal insiders and grassroots conservatives in her timeless classic, A Choice Not An Echo. The flagrant misuse of prosecutorial power becomes the latest chapter of interference with the American people in selecting our president.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
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